Stephen Pope

Shawn Perry, the 39-year-old pilot and father who was killed along with his three young children and two coworkers when the Turbo Commander in which they were flying slammed into a sheer mountain cliff near Phoenix the night before Thanksgiving, wasn’t flying the airplane when it crashed, according to the NTSB’s preliminary report. Rather, Perry […]

Federal immigration officials on Wednesday arrested a Southern California woman accused of helping foreign nationals fraudulently apply for student visas to attend her Los Angeles-area flight school. Karena Chuang, 28, of Lake Elsinore, California, was charged with allegedly orchestrating a scheme that allowed citizens from Egypt, Sri Lanka and Taiwan to enter the U.S. for […]

Ikhana Aircraft Services has received an FAA Supplemental Type Certificate that promises to keep older DHC-6 Twin Otters flying well beyond their design life limits. The California company’s process re-manufactures the DHC-6 fuselage, extending it with an additional 66,000 hours/132,000 cycles of fatigue life. “We are providing an essentially new aircraft with a full useful […]

It was an accident waiting to happen, say local pilots. The crash of a Turbo Commander in Arizona’s Superstition Mountains on Thanksgiving Eve is reigniting debate over a controversial 2007 redesign of the airspace surrounding Phoenix that many say jeopardizes safety. Video footage purporting to capture the accident as it happened shows the airplane flying […]

The cause of the deadly Turbo Commander crash in Arizona’s Superstition Mountains last Wednesday night won’t be known for some time, but that doesn’t mean it’s too early to glean some lessons from this tragedy. As any pilot who has flown in the airspace near Phoenix (or any city surrounded by mountains) knows, seeing the […]

NetJets is suing the IRS over a tax bill totaling $642.7 million, money the fractional jet provider says it never should have been required to pay in the first place. The Internal Revenue Service improperly assessed passenger ticket taxes, NetJets said in its complaint in federal court in Columbus, Ohio. Four NetJets subsidiaries involved in […]

Authorities are searching for the pilot or pilots of a marijuana-filled Beechcraft Duke that made a hard landing and skidded off the runway Monday night at Houston Executive Airport in Brookshire, Texas. The twin-engine airplane touched down at around 7:15 p.m. at the uncontrolled airport located 30 miles west of Houston. Investigators said it appears […]

An aviation rulemaking committee recently concluded there is no justification for a new mandate requiring automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast (ADS-B) “In” technology, recommending instead that the FAA promote voluntary equipage for the “foreseeable future.” That’s great news for general aviation, but it doesn’t mean you should cross this game-changing technology off your avionics must-have list. The […]

A ** Piaggio** Avanti P-180 twin turboprop operated by fractional provider Avantair was destroyed while attempting an emergency landing in Flint, Michigan, on Wednesday when the airplane veered off the runway on touchdown and flipped over, causing minor injuries to the four people on board. The Avanti was en route from Detroit to West Bend, […]

HyperMach Aerospace, a U.K. company with ambitious plans to develop a $180 million supersonic business jet, released revised performance figures at this week’s Dubai Airshow, announcing that the SSBJ will be capable of flying at Mach 4.0. That’s a marked increase from the Mach 3.6 top speed provided when the company launched the project over […]